Saudi Arabia is a country that seems even worse than Iran on certain levels. Iran doesn't hide the fact that it hates the US while the Saudis speak of a longtime friendship. The US has been far too long in thrall of this feudal nation, going out of its way to kiss its butt when it should be kicking it. Why? Is it because the Saudi rulers made a deal with the Wahabbi devils long ago? The Wahabbis won't cause the royals any trouble as long as it makes Wahabbism the state religion and promises to spread this blight throughout the entire world. This is an Islamic version of the "mandate of heaven". What the Wahabbis and the royals do amongst themselves is their affair but the US should not get tangled up in that messy mandate. Suthers should be ashamed of himself for paying fealty to those feudalists in Riyadh. Since when is he accountable to them? The man should at least be reprimanded for this foolishness. colorado must have it real well for him to go traipsing off to the land of the black puddles.

Posted by: ISLAMSFORLOSERS at November 21, 2006 7:27 PM

Very well said Hugh. Here is an update to Suthers trip:

John Suthers Returns From Saudi Arabia

From the article:

Suthers said he was questioned aggressively by King Abdullah for 3 days about whether Homaidan Al-Turki was treated fairly when he was convicted in Arapahoe County of sexually assaulting an Indonesian maid and keeping her as a virtual slave in his Aurora home.

Ummah News Links

Posted by: ummahnewslinks at November 21, 2006 7:34 PM

At a minimum, Colorado taxpayers should demand that John Suthers reimburse every cent of any public funds that may have gone toward this idiotic venture.

Posted by: Infidel33 at November 21, 2006 7:37 PM

from the Ummah News links article above:

"While the trip was grueling, Suthers said he stayed in the Royal Palace Hotel in a six-room suite. The trip was paid for partly by the U.S. State Department and partly by King Abdullah.
Suthers didn't have a final tally but said no Colorado taxpayer money was spent."

Here's my final tally:

$13, 490 roundtrip, firstclass "grueling"airfare on Saudi Arabian Airways
$ 3, 490 Abdullah paid to Saudi Arabian Airways
$13, 000 US State Dept., dhimmi tax, paid to Saudi Arabian Airlines

Oh, and don't US citizens (some probably live in Colorado) pay federal taxes so the US State Department can finance their little parleys with the Saudis?

Posted by: Malinois at November 21, 2006 8:19 PM

Hugh -

I love your anger expressed in this post! I feel you! I am with you! And I am sure so are many others among us. Please keep up the good work!

You have exposed the logic. They need us more then we need them! I agree with you so MUCH!

Posted by: germaninamerica at November 21, 2006 9:13 PM

As Hugh may recall, from the following DW post;

Saudi Gets 27 Years to Life for Enslaving Maid
http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/archives/012947.php

this utterly disgusting article;

Saudi students await the sentencing of Humaidan al Turki case
http://www.aawsat.com/english/news.asp?section=1&id=6198

in which Saudi students expressed absolutely no concern for the Indonesian girl whatsoever.

And from the Umma News Links article above:

""One of the brothers of the defendant that I had met sat through the trial and they simply cannot understand that a jury can give credibility to an Indonesian maid," Suthers said. "And the only possible explanation that is some sort of anti-Muslim bias.""

Amazing, at least, in that the maid is a Muslim, too.

I'd bet that no questions were asked about her by King Abdullah, Crown Prince Sultan, the Saudi journalists or the relatives of Al-Turki during those knee-to-knee conversations either.

Pretty sad.

Posted by: PRCS at November 21, 2006 9:32 PM

A large and distinctly unpleasant gas station

What a wonderful description.

Betcha a dollar to a doughnut this creep DA went over there and apologized for Colorado's anti-slavery statute, and reassured the Saudis that his hands were tied by the law, he had no choice but to enforce it try as he might.

Posted by: Alarmed Pig Farmer at November 21, 2006 10:09 PM

Hugh, can you tell us when the oil will run out in Saudi Arabia?

Please give us some hope, so that we have something to look forward to.

Posted by: Voltaire at November 21, 2006 11:57 PM

Hugh, can you tell us when the oil will run out in Saudi Arabia?

Please give us some hope, so that we have something to look forward to.

Posted by: Voltaire at November 21, 2006 11:57 PM

According to the worst president in American history, Jimmy Carter, it should have run out ten years ago.

I hope that Saudi Arabia's oil dries up soon, but I don't think it will. I also hope that any major new discoveries of oil are as far away from the ME as possible. If oil was about to dry up, don't you think we would be making preparations to change our entire way of doing everything? I certainly hope we would.

Posted by: Susanp at November 22, 2006 1:13 AM

"Saudi Arabia is a country that seems even worse than Iran on certain levels. Iran doesn't hide the fact that it hates the US while the Saudis speak of a longtime friendship. The US has been far too long in thrall of this feudal nation, going out of its way to kiss its butt when it should be kicking it".

Exactly!. Moreover, while in Iran there is a strong middle class bourgeoisie-well educated as a plus- which is open to cooperation with the west in the event of the toppling of AhmadiNejad regime, there isn't any in the Filthy Sour Arabia. In fact, this cesspool constitutes a very big threat because wahhabis have been continuously brainwashing the incoming pilgrims during pilgrimage to mecca. I have many friends with Muslim parenthood who swear that in the hotels the officials hand out booklets and brochures extolling the jihad against the US and Israel in particular.

Please everybody! do try to find the book "The Negotiator" by Frederick Forsyth in which, despite its being a fiction, the author very cleverly shows the ways to eradicate this shit country.

Posted by: Icarus_Project at November 22, 2006 2:31 AM

The House of Saud has one thing Americans respect - MONEY.

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has the ability to influence one thing Americans rate next to love of family - OIL PRICES

These two essential components of modern living make Saudi Arabia a pivotal relationship for the united States, and probably its most important alliance worldwide

Posted by: Voyager at November 22, 2006 3:17 AM

That bizarre story about the Saudis threatening to break diplomatic tiews with the UK and withdraw counter-terrorist co-operation was put out in the BBC news bulletins late on Saturday evening. On Sunday morning it had disappeared without trace - like something out of 'The lady Vanishes.' I assume something like the old 'D notice' went into effect, whereby editors and brodcasters voluntarly spiked stories to protect national security or vital interests.

Posted by: wallyUK at November 22, 2006 4:07 AM

This is so strange. I still don't understand it.

Although I agree with Hugh Fitzgerald that, "Every effort should be made to disabuse these people of their false sense of power," the Attorney General of Colorado seems to feel he has to answer to the Saudis.

Is there an American ambassador to Saudi Arabia? If so, I wonder why s/he didn't go?

Posted by: Josephine at November 22, 2006 7:39 AM

Excellent response and it nails the main reason for the terror threatening the civilized world - the wahabi lobby (derived not from superior "civilization", original technology, sciences, arts and letters, but by mysogynistic sadists with 7th century mentalities who have oil only wealth)!

"What was Colorado Attorney General Suthers doing flying off to Saudi Arabia?"
- Being a good "progressive" US official and falling for the lure of a big bag of cash and orders from Dhimmi Central -i.e. US Department of State.

Mr. Fitzgerald is absolutely correct in calling for punishment of dhimmi Suthers. He and any of the rapidly growing list of like-minded US useful dhimmis should be made aware, non-stop, of being a gutless, clueless, idiot and traitor to Western Civilization. The blood of all victims of wahabi funded global terror is on his and similar's hands.

Further - massive long-term boycotts of any and all saudi derived oil and related products as well as any and all forms of US islamist-propaganda "media" (now in full dhimmi compliance with the wahabists) must be established as soon as possible.

Americans and what is left of Western Civilization and non-islamic civilizations elsewhere in the world can either suffer the higher cost of fuels and having to do more than point the remote at the idiot-box for information or suffer the much worse fate of further and greater erosion and eventual destruction of the West and non-islamic world. Pay higher monetary prices now or pay a much much higher price later -which will not be in dollars to the wahabists'.

Posted by: TINBH at November 22, 2006 8:00 AM

"The House of Saud has one thing Americans respect - MONEY.

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has the ability to influence one thing Americans rate next to love of family - OIL PRICES

These two essential components of modern living make Saudi Arabia a pivotal relationship for the united States, and probably its most important alliance worldwide."
-- from a posting above

Which Americans respect "MONEY"? I don't. And many others don't. And that "MONEY" as you put it, comes not from a modern economy, but from an accident of geology. That "MONEY" is used up by the pleasure-loving decadent indolent Al-Saud princes and princettes and princelings, and what's left over has built a facade of a modern economy, based entirely on millions and millions of foreign workers, from European and American doctors and teachers and restaurateurs, to South Korean contractors, to Indian laborers, to Filipino and Thai domestic workers. And then there are again the ranks of the sex slaves, from the European call girls who come in for a weekend or a week or a month (truly on call), at the top, to those same domestic workers who are casually used and abused as sex slaves by their Saudi masters.

At this point, Saudi Arabia has much less ability to influence the price of oil than the major consumer, the United States, and other consuming nations. For Saudi Arabia is now producing at or very close to its capacity, and there is unlikely to be more oil to be found in great quantitites in Saudi Arabia (according to the geologist/corporate raider T. Boone Pickens and to others who intelligently acknowledge the truth of the "peak oil" hypothesis). There may be some natural gas -- ask Totalfine and Elf -- in the Empty Quarter (how you get it out, save through Oman, is an interesting question). But Saudi Arabia is no longer the swing producer it used to be, has far less power that it used to have.

But we are free to raise the price of oil, all by ourselves, at any time. We are free to put any tax we wish on gasoline sold in this country, and so push down demand. We are free to put all kinds of surcharges on the cost of oil aside from gasoline. We are free to subsidize mass transit, to put taxes on SUVs, to change our ways so that happiness or pseudo-happiness which we pseudo-pursue is derived from things that use up less energy (less driving around in hectic vacancy, more quiet reading by inglenook).

And at the same time, that "MONEY" you think, like Joel Grey in Caberet, makes the world go round, has to be parked somewhere. The Saudis are heavily invested, as intelligent investors would be, in the United States and Western Europe. We have the power to seize those assets, whenever we decide that Saudi Arabia is our enemy. We seized assets owned by the German government and German nationals during World War II - didn't we? And there was nothing the Nazis could do about it. We have to read Saudi Arabia the riot act, and explain that we now thoroughly understand, as we never did before (with the Scowcrofts and Bakers who have been such promoters of "our friends in the Gulf" and whose sources of funds do not bear -- else why do they not reveal their foreign clients, as Scowcroft has been repeatedly asked to do so -- much looking into).

Saudi Arabia, let me repeat, can do nothing to us. We can do a thousand things to it. Not least, we can deny entry for medical treatment to all members of its ruling family. We can keep them from coming here for education. We can keep them out even for vacations -- and now that their alternative playground, Lebanon, which the Hariri family was building up for the Saudis and other Gulf Arabs as a place to desport themselves in the manner they so obviously would like, but in an Arabic-speaking enviroonment, they do need places to go, places to spend that soft-earned money of theirs.

You have it all wrong. You have it the way a few generations of American policymakers have been taught to believe, have taught others to believe, about Saudi Arabia.

Posted by: Hugh at November 22, 2006 8:08 AM

We seized assets owned by the German government and German nationals during World War II - didn't we?

Actually you paid large amounts of compensation to US corporations for damage to their assets in Germany.

I suggest you read up on The Carlyle Group

Carlyle

Former CIA agent Robert Baer's new book is "Sleeping With the Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude." "Call it poetic coincidence. But right as the Carlyle Group was getting into its annual investor conference at Washington's Ritz-Carlton Hotel on September 11, 2001, AA Flight 77 slammed into the Pentagon, only two and a half miles to the south. If UAL Flight 93 had hit the White House, its presumed target, the Carlyle attendees would have felt the shock, and it was a group far hard to shock. At the meeting were the group's senior counsel James Baker, secretary of state in the Bush I administration; then Carlyle chairman Frank Carlucci, Ronald Reagan's last secretary of defense and national security adviser before that; and Shafiq bin Laden, representing the Bin Laden Group - one of the world's largest construction companies - but far more famous today as Osama bin Laden's brother. The gathering was the perfect metaphor for Washington's strange affair with Saudi Arabia."

You forget that it is Decision-Makers that implement policy and they are well-catered for by Saudi Arabia which has great devotion to the personal wealth of opinion-formers and decision-makers

Posted by: Voyager at November 22, 2006 8:36 AM

ormer spy Robert Baer, author of SEE NO EVIL: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA's War on Terrorism, makes the leap from intelligence reformist to national mentor with his new book, "SLEEPING WITH THE DEVIL: How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude." Indeed, his last sentence has the White House laying in the moonlight with its legs spread, lustfully eyeing the Saudi wallet on the bureau.

This is an extraordinary compelling work, not least because it provides detailed and documented discovery not previously available, of how the U.S. government has over the course of several administrations made a deliberate decision to a) not spy on the Arab countries, b) not collect and read open sources in Arabic, c) not attempt to understand the sub-state actors such as the Muslim brotherhood, despite a long history in which these groups commit suicide to achieve their objectives, including the murder of several heads of state.

Baer's most brutal points should make every American shudder: it is America itself that is subsidizing terrorism, as well as the corruption of the Saudi royal family. Baer's documented estimate is that $1 dollar from every barrel of petroleum is spent on Saudi royal family sexual misbehavior, and $1.50 of every barrel of petroleum bought by America ultimately ends up funding extremist schools, foundations, and terrorist groups.

Baer has "gone back in time" to document how all of this terrorism began in the 1970's, but despite its terrible local consequences (including the assassination of heads of state), was ignored by Washington as "a local problem."

In one lovely real-life account, Baer, then duty officer at CIA while Iraq poised to invade Kuwait, found that the $35 billion per year system was useless, impotent. It came down to his calling the chief of station in Kuwait, who called a border guard, who lifted his binoculars and described the Iraqi tanks stopped for lunch. Baer says: "As I waited, I wondered: Is this what all that money for intelligence is buying us? A pair of binoculars?"

Saudi

Posted by: Voyager at November 22, 2006 8:38 AM

Fitzgerald claims:

There is no oil weapon. Saudi Arabia is completely dependent on the sale of oil."

We found out the power of this "nonexistent" oil weapon in the 1970s, when the price of gasoline rose by 50% in three years, gas lines snaked around the block at every filling station, and inflation and unemployment both rose to double-digit levels. OPEC imposed an embargo on all oil shipments to the U.S. in 1973 following U.S. support for Israel in the 1973 war--and it had a huge effect on the U.S. I still remember having to go to school in pitch dark because the Government made Daylight Savings Time last into the winter that year. That left OPEC free to sell oil to other countries, however, so it wasn't like they had no more customers.

As for economics, remember that oil is a highly inelastic commodity; we're so dependent on it that it takes a huge increase in price to dampen demand to any significant extent. It costs less than $10 a barrel to extract the oil. When they sell the oil at $70 a barrel, that's a 600% profit margin for them--and we pay it.

If OPEC pulled the same trick now that they pulled in the 1970's, they could jack up the price of oil to maybe $140 a barrel. That would send the price of gasoline in this country past $5.00 a gallon. Americans cannot easily swallow such price increases because of their automobile-dependent lifestyle. The result would certainly be the return of stagflation--a long-term economic malaise. No American President has succeeded in persuading Americans to put up with such economic sacrifices. Everybody remembers what happened to Jimmy Carter's "moral equivalent of war."

Posted by: Steven L. at November 22, 2006 8:49 AM

"If OPEC pulled the same trick now that they pulled in the 1970's, they could jack up the price of oil to maybe $140 a barrel. That would send the price of gasoline in this country past $5.00 a gallon."
-- from a posting above

If Saudi Arabia could jack up the price ot $140 a barrel, why doesn't it? Why doesn't it make the price $500 a barrel, or $1000 a barrel? The reason is that oil is subject to such things as the law of supply and demand. What it could do in 1973 it could attempt to do in 1979, and then the price collapsed in 1980. Does the poster understand why?

Does he understand that the oil-producing nations must carefully calculate what they charge for oil, lest the switch from it proceed too fast, thereby rendering their reserves in the ground less valuable over time (they assign a Present Value to such reserves). Saudi Arabia is always, nowadays, trying with false bonhomie at various official gatherings to pooh-pooh any notion of "political" influence on the price of oil, because the very things that Sheik Yamani used to warn direly about (see J. B. Kelly's incomparable study of the oil market and Araby, "Arabia, the Gulf, and the West") are exactly those things that now worry the Saudis --that the West might become sufficiently alarmed to actually have a policy that would intelligently be based on raising, through steadily rising self-taxation, the price of oil.

The nightmare for Saudi Arabia is too high a price too soon, and the real nightmare would be a price based on American (and other) governments taxing the use of gasoline and oil higher and higher and higher -- for this would force down demand, and probably force down as well the price that OPEC could intelligently charge.

A third of a century has gone by, and little if anything has been done by successive, very foolish American governments to tax oil consumption and then use those taxes for the purposes of subsidizing other sources of energy (nuclear, solar, wind, coal gasification, and so on), and mass transit, and all kinds of conservation projects.

But right now, as the price falls, is the time for the Administration to announce it will push for higher taxes on oil and gasoline. That it hasn't made a peep about this tells you a great deal about how the Administration chooses to fight the war of self-defense against the Jihad.

With big, clumsy, very expensive "boots on the ground" in Iraq, as we bring toys and good things to eat to the boys and girls on the other side of the mountain, all over Dar al-Islam.

"I think I can. I think I can."

It worked for The Little Engine That Could. In a children's book.

In the real world, it won't work at all.

Posted by: Hugh at November 22, 2006 10:22 AM

If Saudi Arabia could jack up the price ot $140 a barrel, why doesn't it? Why doesn't it make the price $500 a barrel, or $1000 a barrel

1) You were right that they don't want to make substitutes economic, but another simple issue is that saudi did not push the prices up earlier this year either - it was Wall Street

The Hedge Funds piled into oil and gas futures looking for easy profits backed by cheap credit...........once the supply constraints of Prudhoe Bay and Venezuela and The Gulf rigs looked less of a certainty they unwound their positions.

The big producer at present is Russia and the one that isn't producing is Iraq and as lonmg as Iran can keep Iraq in turmoil oil prices stay just where they want them

Bush should have imposed a Federal Gasoline Tax after 9/11 - he could have lifted it before the Elections - but it would have done something to kick Venezuela and Saudi and Iran

Posted by: Voyager at November 22, 2006 10:30 AM

A question for any historians and economists who read this site:

How many civilians were killed in the West (and elsewhere) by the huge oil-price increases imposed by the OPEC oil producing countries in the mid 1970’s?

It is sometimes argued that the decision to invade Iraq was correct because sanctions were killing Iraqi civilians and that sanctions could only be lifted if there was regime change in Bagdad. ( This was essentially the policy of the Clinton Administration, not that Michael Moore noticed when he made his idiotic Fahrenheit 911.)

It is sometimes estimated that sanctions killed 0.5 million Iraqi children under 5 years old.
It wasn’t as though the USA or Britain was shooting Iraqi civilians, it was that sanctions had a devastating effect on the economy of Iraq.
The same could be said of the oil-price increases in the 1970s.
The economies of Europe and North America were sent into deep recession by the price increases.
This must have affected the ability of these countries to provide things like health-care.
It must have had an effect on the economies of countries in Asia, South America and Africa etc?

So how many civilians were killed by the oil price increase?

Surely there is someone who reads this site who could provide a reasonably objective answer to this question? Isn’t there someone who works for an organisation like the World Bank, a UN relief agency or a professional economist?

There are many factors that should be referred to before passing judgement on the sanctions on Iraq.
Civilian suffering could have been relieved if it had not been for the massive levels of corruption that was allowed to develop within the Oil-for-food program under the noses of the UN.

Once the Hussein regime was removed from power, sanctions were lifted.
And there were good reasons for containing the Iraqi regime.

Saddam Hussein once boasted on TV that Iraq had “enough chemical weapons to burn up half of Israel.”
He was working on a nuclear reactor with French help.
He was responsible for a war, the Iran-Iraq war, which killed more people than all the Arab-Israeli wars combined. Some historians argue that the real reason the Iran-Iraq war happened was that the Iranian Revolution triggered instability in the Shiite regions of Iraq. Saddam Hussein resolved to crush this movement at it’s ideological source i.e. Iran.

So am I saying that the West’s sanctions on Iraq were just as bad as oil-price increases imposed by the OPEC oil producing countries in the mid 1970’s?

No, not necessarily.

For starters, the OPEC oil-price increases were initially in retaliation for Westen support for Israel in the 1973 war. Even if you accept that the Israelis are oppressing the Palestinians there is no argument that this is a genuine case of moral equivalence.
If the Iran-Iraq war killed 1.4 million people, more people than all the Arab-Israeli wars combined then the idea of moral equivalence is not proved.
Israel is not the worst enemy of Muslims.
In the last fifty years more Muslims have been killed by other Muslims than by the Israelis.
The irony of this always seems to be lost on them.

But again, I think the question has to asked:

How many civilians were killed in the West (and elsewhere) by the huge oil-price increases imposed by the OPEC oil producing countries in the mid 1970’s?

Posted by: Odyessus at November 22, 2006 1:38 PM

For starters, the OPEC oil-price increases were initially in retaliation for Westen support for Israel in the 1973 war. Even if you accept that the Israelis are oppressing the Palestinians there is no argument that this is a genuine case of moral equivalence.

Yes, and No.

It was created by The Club of Rome Report - "The Limits to Growth" published in 1972

Rome

which predicted the end of oil reserves and the resource constraints on Western affluence. OPEC was formed as a replica of the Texas Railroad Commission and suddenly had a Western World that had provided intellectual underpinning for the notion that oil was a scarce and irreplaceable resource that was being sold too cheaply.

As Wikipedia notes It has since come to light that an accord regarding the usage of the "oil weapon" was actually negotiated before the war by Egypt and Saudi Arabia[2]. Thus by the early 1970s the great Western oil conglomerates suddenly faced a unified bloc of producers.

Posted by: Voyager at November 22, 2006 1:49 PM

Aramco, Aramco ! Somoeone should have produce the Musical on Broadway right!
A tale of the machinations of the US State department and the Ibn Saud families and their cohorts. All set in burning Arabian sands and Oases, whith Busby Berkely choreography and flying camels galore.
Gem songs such as "Caravan of lust" "the US president = he's My man!" "brothers of Islam don't pay no federal TAX!"

Posted by: chevalier de st george at November 22, 2006 2:10 PM

No, the OPEC oil increases would have come with or without the Yom Kippur War. The producers had gradually been seizing more and more power from the oil-consuming nations and Seven Sisters in previous years. Aggressive price rises were made even by the West's friend, the Shah of Iran. The Yom Kippur war merely provided an excuse to scare the West, to make it think that a decision based on rational economics (and greed) somehow was an act of political punishment, so that along with getting the West to acquiesce easily to that 1973 quadrupling of prices, Western governments were also fooled into thinking they had to do the Saudi (and general Arab) bidding if they wished to avoid further price rises or disruptions. It was all nonsense.

But though it was nonsense, those well-placed people in Western governments and businesses who stood to gain -- themselves, as individuals, or their companies -- from Saudi or other Arab contracts, or contacts, or outright bribes -- had a stake too in claiming that the Western powers had to "placate the Saudis (and other Arabs)" and to push their Muslim agenda, to do nothing that might offend them. Thus was precious time lost, and nothing major done to raise the price of oil and gasoline through large and steadily increasing taxes, and thus was the support through funding from Saudi Arabia, the U.A.E., Kuwait, and Iran, of terrorists as well as of campaigns of Da'wa (including support for mosques and madrasas built and maintained all over not only the Muslim world, but also all or regarded benignly, because, as we all know -- otherwise why would the press and other media, and government officials of every kind keep telling us -- Saudi Arabia was, had always been, always would be, our "staunch ally."

If there had been no Yom Kippur War the price rises of 1973-74, and then of 1979, would have been the same. The only thing that counts for oil-consuming nations is what they can do -- what other sources of oil and gas, or sources of energy other than oil and gas, and what large-scale measures of conservation can be undertaken, and what they can do to tax the use of gasoline, and of oil more generally, by their own consumers, in order to dampen, and dampen some more, demand for what OPEC produces, and upon which the Jihad battens.

Posted by: Hugh at November 22, 2006 2:38 PM

Odysseus:
A case can be made that lives in the West were saved as a result of the dramatic increase in fuel costs during the '70s. That's when the U.S. national speed limit was instituted at 55 mph (right after I'd gotten my drivers license, dammit!). I believe the stats showed a meaningful decline in road fatalities for a fair while afterwards.

Posted by: materialguy at November 22, 2006 6:40 PM

On the history of OPEC, the price hikes of the '70s, and the beginnings of the Saudi/U.S. relationship, the best book by far is Dan Yergin's "The Prize". It was published in '92, so it gets through the first Gulf War, but not the current crisis. Its one of those rare histories that reads like a novel.

Posted by: materialguy at November 22, 2006 6:49 PM

A case can be made that lives in the West were saved as a result of the dramatic increase in fuel costs during the '70s

The Western United States you mean ? In Europe petrol has never been cheap, always been highly taxed. All the 55 mph speed limit did in the Us was let people set the cruise-control and read books or drink whisky while driving on boring empty highways in New Mexico and Minnesota and Kansas

Posted by: Voyager at November 23, 2006 2:14 AM